Will the search engine optimization rules change in 2018? This is the question that most webmasters ask these days. No matter how much the techniques will change, the fundamentals of SEO will remain the same. You won’t be able to game the system by taking shortcuts and cutting corners. Hard work is essential to become successful in SEO in 2018.

The truth is understanding and knowing how to use search engine optimization effectively takes time. Google’s algorithm contains hundreds of components that are taken into account when ranking a website. It is almost impossible for a webmaster to master all these components to become proficient in SEO. You should put in a lot of time and effort to stay ahead in the SEO game in 2018. There are many rules that you need to be aware of if you plan to dominate SEO in 2018. But the following seven rules definitely stand out from the rest of them.

1. Quality Content That Offers Value To The Visitor

There are no shortcuts to producing quality content that offers value to your visitor. In fact, Google is getting better and better at recognizing the low-quality content. Don’t try to game the system when producing content. If you do so, you are the one who will lose out. If you give the visitor high-quality content, your site will rank higher on Google with a high volume of traffic. Such content will engage the visitor and makes them want to share your content with others. Make sure that you focus on the following components when creating content for your visitor:

Your content should be informative and try to solve the customer’s problem

Write naturally for humans while paying attention to the requirements of Google.

2. Page Speed Is Important

Make use of Google’s PageSpeed Insight to determine what pages of your site need improvements. Improving your page loading times will help increase your visibility on Google. There are many other tools to check the page loading times such as Varvy, GTMetrix, and Pingdom to test your page speed. Try to improve in the following areas when improving your page speed:

Make use of browser caching to ensure that the page elements are served faster.

Don’t leave any JavaScript or render-block CSS above the fold of your website.

Reduce the response time of all your server requests

3. Using CDN And DNS For Your Domain Will Serve Your Content Quickly

Cloudfront by Amazon – content delivery network (CDN) – is essential to quickly serve your content to the visitor. In fact, a CDN can distribute your content across numerous servers located all over the globe. It mirrors the content and serves it from the server closest to the user.

Getting your DNS moved to CloudFlare or a similar platform will help speed up the DNS propagation times. In fact, DNS propagation lags depending on your registration and server location as well as where the DNS request originates from.

4. Responsiveness Of Your Website Across Mobile Devices

Mobile searchers have already outpaced desktop searchers today. Your website should have a responsive theme so that it becomes user-friendly to mobile devices. Search Engine Land released a report that stated mobile searchers accounted for more than 60% of the total number of searchers in 2016. Your website should be properly optimized for mobile devices if you want it to rank higher on Google and the other search engines. In fact, the visitor should be able to easily use your website across different platforms. You should implement a CSS library such as Bootstrap for this purpose. If not, you can build your own in this regard.

5. Provide An Enhanced User Experience To The Visitor

Your website should provide an excellent user experience to the visitor. In fact, you should ensure that your site is easy to use. It should be easy to navigate where the customer could search and easily discover the content that he or she is looking for. That is the only way to enhance the user experience of your website. It is important to improve your rankings on Google and the other search engines. Here are a few tips to follow:

6. Use Latent Semantic Indexing

LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing is a technology used by Google in its Hummingbird search. LSI helps the search engine to display appropriate content by recognizing what the visitor is looking for instead of returning content based on a typical keyword. It is considered the current iteration of semantic-style searching used by the search engines.

For example, there are different phrases to say “make money online.” Some of them include “earn cash on the internet” and “generate an income on the net.” Today, Google can readily recognize that all these phrases refer to the same thing. You should be using LSI words in all the content that you create. This will help you create natural-looking content instead of stuffing your keyword too many times.

7. Leverage Trusted Domains When Marketing Your Content

You should promote your content on other trusted domains. In fact, marketing is an essential component of effective search engine optimization in 2018. In fact, you should be creating quality content on authority websites such as LinkedIn Publishing, Quora, Medium, and a host of other sites on the net. Publish your quality content on these authority websites and have a link pointing back to your original content from that particular website. This is a very important practice if you want to improve your rankings on Google and the other search engines in 2018. That will help improve your visibility and conversions over time. Your profits will increase in the long run as a result.

Anurag Pareek is a Toronto based SEO & Digital Marketing Consultant. He is a creative link builder and conversion rate optimization specialist. When he is not obsessing over how to build better backlinks, Anurag likes to travel and play guitar.